


i keep thinking how we almost made it

by buckynatalia



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/F, House sharing, Roommates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4600683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckynatalia/pseuds/buckynatalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello?” I said, craning my neck around the door.</p><p> A startled-looking girl stood on the other side, thumbs tucked into backpack straps. Feathery blond hair. Frayed thrift store shorts and paint-speckled shirt. There were bags under her eyes.</p><p>  “Hey,” she said. “Lexa, right? We talked on the phone.”</p><p>  Oh, shit. The phone conversation. The Craigslist post. Roommate wanted, because I’d lost another job. I couldn’t afford the rent. And she looked like a rich kid gone broke, a dirt-broke art student. </p><p> Not exactly what I expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

__

 

It was noon, and strips of light filtered down across my floor. Green things exploded across every surface, vines and flowers and small trees in their pots. They spilled down bookshelves and yawned up at the sun. Some days it felt like these growing things were the only thing keeping me alive. The concrete wasteland was choking the life out of me.

Perhaps this was just my imagination. 

There was a knock on my door, soft but assured. This was not my imagination.

I wrapped a sheet around myself. Whoever it was, they didn’t need to see me in my bra and panties. It was far too hot for unnecessary clothes.

“Hello?” I said, craning my neck around the door. 

A startled-looking girl stood on the other side, thumbs tucked into backpack straps. Feathery blond hair. Frayed thrift store shorts and paint-speckled shirt. There were bags under her eyes.

“Hey,” she said. “Lexa, right? We talked on the phone.”

Oh, shit. The phone conversation. The Craigslist post. Roommate wanted, because I’d lost another job. I couldn’t afford the rent. And she looked like a rich kid gone wrong, a dirt-broke art student. Mommy and daddy were probably very disappointed that she was sharing a room with a stranger. Not exactly what I expected.

“Clarke,” I said, remembering. “Come on in."

My house wasn’t exactly clean. Crumpled pieces of paper lay on the floor here and there. Coffee stains on the counter. Books piled on windowsills. But still, the whole place smelled of incense and growing things. And it wasn’t exactly dirty, either.

She stood in the middle of it, breathing it all in. Her eyes drank it up like wine.

“Your room is this way,” I said, and lead her down the hall. I pushed open the door. A smallish room with whitewashed walls, square window and narrow bed. Simple. 

Clarke stepped inside the room, strode across it, and leaned out the window. Across the way, there was an old woman with a cat. She watched telenovelas a lot. Boring, ordinary gray brick buildings, squashed together. 

"It’s nice,” she said, turning back to look at me.

Not really, but it was a cute thing to say.

She looked around the room, checking the closet. “Rent is how much?”

“Three hundred a month,” I replied, “And we share utilities."

“Great,” she said, trailing a hand across the bare mattress. “How soon can I move in?”

“Whenever you like,” I said, a little surprised at her urgency. I wondered what the story was.

Clarke shoved her hands in her pockets. The afternoon light picked out gold strands in her hair. She seemed worn-out, like her person had been through the wash too many times. “Is tomorrow good?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow it is.”

“Cool,” Clarke’s smile was a thing of wonder, dazzling as the sun in your eyes. She followed me out into the hall, where a couple of band posters hung, pages ripped out of books. A couple old vinyls. No art. 

She spun to face me. “Anything else?”

I sighed. I needed to make sure she wasn’t weird.

“Do you smoke weed?” I asked her. All smoking had to happen on the fire escape, or not at all. 

“Not often."

“Got any pets?”

“No.”

“Got a boyfriend? Girlfriend?"

She blinked once, hard, running her fingers over a chain around her neck. There was this little pendant. A deer with two heads, I think. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

Clarke’s hand dropped. “No, I don't.”

She moved towards the door, her sandals soft and quiet on the floors.

“See you tomorrow, then,” I said, unsure what else to say. We’d be seeing a lot more of each other.

“Nice to meet you, Lexa,” said Clarke. 

And she was gone, smelling of grapefruit and hot asphalt.

I suppose I could’ve found someone worse.

 

__________


	2. Chapter 2

__________

 

 

 

  Morning was melting into midday, and I’d eaten a breakfast of leftover guacamole and tiny blue antidepressants. My phone buzzed on the counter. Incoming text. 

 

  Clarke.   _I’ll be there @ 2:45 to start hauling my shit. See you soon!_

 

  I just typed in a quick _OK_ , pressed send. I wondered why she was doing all of this so quickly. For all she knew, I could be an axe murderer. Or worse, a party girl who came home late, smelling of vodka and vomit.

 

  I’d just downed my third mug of coffee. Already the caffeine prickled under my skin, making me jittery and wired, the perfect state for writing. Artificial energy surged through my veins, so I unclasped my typewriter case and set to work, banging away at the keys. 

 

  I wrote about ordinary things: the gaping hole in your heart, like a lost tooth. Someone who never succeeding in washing the sunlight out of their hair. Storm clouds gathering green on the horizon. Withering flowers on a pretty girl’s grave.

 

  When I ran out of ink, I hung the poem up on the gray wall of my bedroom, between a magazine clipping and a bird skull. It was an okay piece of writing. Not anything I’d ever share.

 

  If I squeezed my eyes shut real tight, I could almost hear her singing far away. Costia, with her cinnamon hair and long legs. Her voice had been deep for a girl, and rich, the sound pushing into my ribcage and resting there forever. I still had her necklaces, tucked into a tiny box at the edge of my dresser. They were cheap crystals, bought from music festivals and some psychic’s shop across town. Costia said they kept away evil spirits. Lots of good that did her.

 

  The crystal pendants sat there unused, small chunks of the sky, haunting me. 

 

  I found a loose sharpie and scrawled a new poem across my wrist, feeling the black ink sink in. Something about denim and golden hair. Something about rust, and dandelions pushing through concrete. Almost incoherent, but not quite. 

 

  At three p.m, there was a knock. Stronger and more assured, likely a boy’s. Voices echoed in the hallway. A girl laughed.

 

  At least this time I was wearing clothes.

 

  “Hello,” I said, opening the door. Three people stood in the hall, flushed cheeks and hesitant smiles.

 

  A tall boy with dark curls and a smattering of freckles stood in the doorway, holding no less than four boxes. Clarke stood next to him with a canvas backpack and plastic tote full of art supplies. A girl in a red jacket dragged a carpet behind her. This was quite an operation.

 

  “Hey,” Clarke said in greeting. I stepped aside to let them in. 

 

   They set the stuff in her room, a pile in the corner. The four of us stood in the little white room, assessing each other. 

 

  Sure, I wasn’t exactly friendly-looking. A little scary, in fact. Maybe it was the shredded shirt or the kohl smudged over my eyelids. Maybe it was the set of my shoulders, a predisposed inclination towards intimidation. 

 

“This is Bellamy and Raven,” Clarke said, gesturing towards them. Raven gave me a little wave, Bellamy a tight nod.

 

  Her friends were fit and clean, completely ordinary. A six-pack rippled under Raven's tank top. She kept glancing at the tall boy, arms crossed. He was attractive, I suppose, if you liked the whole freckles-and-biceps thing. If you liked boys. 

 

  “Need help unloading?” I asked them. Clarke’s hair was braided back today, ropes of blond hair falling down her back. She was orange and blue and something out of a fashion blog. 

 

  Clarke nodded. “That’d be great."

 

  So we went out into the hall, down the stifling elevator that creaked and groaned. Out the propped-open door that let the air conditioning leach out. A red flatbed truck sat squarely in two parking spaces.

 

  I tucked a desk chair under my arm. It had been white, a long time ago, now splashed with watercolors and blots of india ink. In the elevator again, standing uncomfortably close to a couple of strangers. Raven tapped away at her cracked phone screen, chewing on her bottom lip. Bellamy texted her back, a silent conversation hovering above my head. 

 

  It took half an hour to move all of Clarke’s stuff up to the fifth floor. Girl had a lot of stuff.

 

  “I ordered pizza,” said Clarke to no one in particular.

 

  Her friends had been examining the tiny flat. Bellamy was on the fire escape taking a phone call, soaking in the hot sun. Raven moved around the living room, running her hand over the waxy leaves of a creeping plant.

 

  “So, Lexa,” Raven said, collapsing onto my couch. She had a way of finding a home in every place, I think. In every person. "What do you do for a living?”

 

  “I’m a writer,” I said vaguely, sitting at the other end of the couch. I didn’t mention, however, that I also worked the registers at the local Pick n’ Save. But my budding career as a corporate pawn, that wasn’t good conversation fodder. 

 

  “Cool. What do you write?"

 

  I wasn’t even sure what I wrote. Half-baked thoughts and desperate aches spilled out on paper. Sometimes I wrote out my nightmares or daydreams, or attempted a novel. It never turned out how I wanted.

 

  “Poetry,” I answered. 

 

  “Ever thought about publishing anything?”

 

  I shook my head. "Nah. There’s plenty of sad nineteen-year-olds out there. Oversaturated market.”

 

  Raven shrugged. “Who knows. Somebody might like your work."

 

  “What about you, Raven?” I asked her, shifting the topic. "What makes you happy?”

 

  “Making things right,” she sighed, looking out at the fire escape, where Bellamy was still lost in conversation. He ran a hand through his hair in distress. Raven dragged her eyes back to me. “Fixing things. Cars, radios, ACs, people. That’s what I do.”

 

  “Good for you,” I said, meaning it, because sometimes it felt like all I did was break things.

 

  Raven looked at me with her warm brown eyes. The sun filtered in, and Clarke unpacked her things and set her expensive shampoo in the shower. It almost felt like they’d been there a long time.

 

  The pizza came at last, the delivery boy half dead of heatstroke. I gave him extra tip.

 

  We ate the pizza, one large sausage and one green pepper. Bellamy came in off of the fire escape, talking about a kid sister that had gotten into a fight at school. Sounded like a tough kid. 

 

  When Raven and Bellamy had gone, hugging Clarke goodbye, the sun had begun to set. The two of us retreated into our rooms.  I sat on my bed, headphones in, writing with a pen and notebook. Sure, I had a computer to type on. But I liked to leave a mark. I liked to see the heavy ink drag across the page, to see the indent I left. If I died tomorrow, there’d be proof of my existence. 

 

  I could hear her music leaking through the walls as I lay awake that night. She had good taste. Clarke hummed along to it, the melody slipping under my door. Moonlight streamed in the window. I flicked on my lamp and pulled a chapter book from my bedside table. 

 

  I t was a crappy, creased paperback copy of Romeo and Juliet, well loved. I flipped to the very last page, where a note was written in blue pen. It was printed with the careful hand of a thirteen-year-old girl.

 

            _this book is ~~bullshit~~ stupid. _ _no one should have to die for true love._

 

__

_              (if lost, please return to Costia S) _

 

 

 

______________

 


	3. Chapter 3

______________

 

Clarke was an okay roommate.

She washed the dishes with her organic hippie soap, left them to dry. She left her artist’s fingerprints everywhere, shades of lilac and red oil paint smeared on the sink. Pots of pale white foundation sat in the cabinet, various brushes and things overflowing from their cup. Clarke came home from art school exhausted, with smudges of charcoal on her cheek. Sometimes her fingernails would be inexplicably stained orange for weeks, or she’d have chunks of plaster in her hair. 

And I found strands of translucent blond hairs in my clothes. Clotted around the shower drain. Fine gold hairs cooked into my spaghetti. Clarke was inescapable, all-consuming. Her soft lavender smell lingered on every surface. 

Tonight, the two of us stood in the kitchen. It was past midnight, and a moth was circling the hot kitchen light, doomed to die a soft death. Clarke was standing over the stove, her hair tied up in a knot, stirring some kind of experimental mint pasta. I propped the window open, to let the steam filter out. Her cheeks were flushed pink, something like a porcelain doll from the turn of the century.

The cool night air filled the room.

“Lexa?” she asked me, her cherry-blossom lips parting just a little. “I see your silhouette on the fire escape, I smell your clove cigarettes through the window, and some days we don’t say a word to each other. I feel like we should change that."

Yeah, some days it felt like I was a ghost compared to her ever-burning soul. And sometimes I wanted to start a conversation but never mustered up the energy. Clarke hadn’t considered that this distance between us wasn’t entirely coincidental.

“Maybe we should,” I said, and her eyes burned on mine. Perhaps arms-length was the best relationship the two of us could hope for. “Here’s a start. My favorite color is gray. My mom had me when she was seventeen. In middle school, I had pink highlights in my hair, and I never showered. I’ve broken my arm falling out of a tree, and sprained my ankle at a punk concert.”

Clarke smiled, and for now, that seemed like enough. 

I didn’t tell her about the first poem I wrote, in a cheap black notebook with a stolen gel pen. I didn’t tell her how the teacher snatched it from my hands and yelled at me for writing it. I didn’t tell her about how Costia was a pretty crier. I didn’t tell her about the nights I went to sleep with an empty stomach and bruised face. I didn’t tell her how, when they lowered my mother into the ground, I felt almost relieved.

“And what about you?” I asked her, trying to even out my breathing. “What do you want to be known for?”

Clarke stirred her slimy green penne. “I want to make a change in the world. Even if it’s just in one person’s mind. Even if it’s through my art.”

Cliche. But somehow she wasn’t contrived. Not even for a moment.

“…And also I ate a cricket on a dare, once,” Clarke added. “But it came in a little package, already dried and salted. So I don’t know if that counts.”

“Think it counts,” I said, allowing myself a small smile. “I’m all for alternative protein sources, what with overpopulation and all, but crickets are disgusting. Little legs going down your throat and shit.”

Clarke laughed, her head thrown back. She was infectious.

“Hope you like mint,” she said, shoveling half of the pasta into a bowl and giving it to me. Steam billowed off of it, smelling green and delicate. Clarke offered it to me with a big grin, a silver tooth glinting from the back of her mouth.

We sat on her bed and talked for hours. Talking to her was easy. Summer movies and street artists and the romanticization of mental illness. Clarke was the kind of girl who made you feel wanted.

The sun was every shade of peach and lilac by the time our conversation finished. 

“I’m going to bed,” I said through a yawn. She was already half asleep, half-moons of melted mascara under her blue eyes. 

“Goodnight,” she said with a small, inattentive smile. She pulled a quilt over herself. 

I fell into a dark, heavy sleep, the kind that could last centuries. I didn’t dream once. Clarke’s voice was the only one replaying in my mind, over and over. Her smile, her laugh, the way her eyes lit up when she was passionate about something.

Maybe arms-length was a bit too far.

 

______________


End file.
